Working with the media - together we better understand PAR

During 2022, PAR Visibility and Communication Project has so far organised two media trainings, where representatives of the national and local media were introduced more closely to topics in the field of public administration reform, public policy, public finance management and transparency.

PPS Director Bojana Tošić and Tara Petrović from "Civic Initiatives" spoke to the media about the importance of public participation in the process of adopting policies and regulations - with a special focus on the eConsultation portal and the work of the Open Government Partnership initiative. This training provided an opportunity for media representatives to exchange experiences and knowledge from these areas in an open conversation with the lecturers. An important segment of the work was the information that the media representatives shared with the participants from their experience on involving the public in decision-making processes, as well as the importance of the e-Consultation portal from the point of view of media monitoring and control of the process itself. In Divčibare, at the end of May, the journalists also learned why it is important to involve the public in decision-making processes and what the European practice is, as well as what public policies are and what legislation is related to involving the public in decision-making processes at the national and local levels.

At the second training, this time held in Sokobanja in early July, the Project focused its work with journalists on two important segments - participation and transparency in the process of budget preparation and execution in local self-governments, but also the importance of inter-municipal cooperation in the implementation of local self-government affairs. From personal experience, members of the Municipal Council of Sokobanja Slaviša Krstić and Novak Gajić from the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities spoke about this to journalists from local and national media. Journalists had a large number of questions when it comes to the involvement of citizens in decision making on local budgets, and on how to ensure proactive and timely publication of data on the spending of budget funds. Through good practice examples, the interlocutors spoke about all these issues, which later inspired the journalists to write their own local stories on this topic. One of these examples came from Smederevska Palanka and is available at this link: https://youtu.be/xG9qj6ErF2k

It is important to note that the project experts used the opportunity to work directly with journalists during the media trainings - jointly preparing models for various stories on the topics covered. The training sessions were also an opportunity to hold media briefings, where the media were presented with topics that the project's expert team plans to implement in cooperation with them during the well-known "PAR is..." campaign, through which the Project has been successfully cooperating with over 20 local and more than 10 national media in Serbia. In the scope of the campaign itself, during 2020 and 2021, more than 640 TV stories, newspaper articles in print and online media, and a number of guest appearances on TV and radio, were featured on the topic of promoting the results of public administration reform supported by the EU.

The PAR Visibility and Communication Project is entering its final phase, and our plan is that by the end of January 2023, the project experts carry out two more media trainings and accompanying media briefings. The next media training is planned for the beginning of September, in Vrnjačka Banja.